SOME PROBLEMS IN PROCESSING Research Methodology

Problems in Processing of data in Research Methodology

We can take up the following two problems of processing the data for analytical purposes:

The problem concerning “Don’t know” (or DK) responses: While processing the data, the researcher often comes across some responses that are difficult to handle. One category of such responses may be ‘Don’t Know Response’ or simply DK response. When the DK response group is small, it is of little significance. But when it is relatively big, it becomes a matter of major concern in which case the question arises: Is the question which elicited DK response useless? The answer depends on two points viz., the respondent actually may not know the answer or the researcher may fail in obtaining the appropriate information. In the first case the concerned question is said to be alright and DK response is taken as legitimate DK response. But in the second case, DK response is more likely to be a failure of the questioning process.

How DK responses are to be dealt with by researchers? The best way is to design better type of questions. Good rapport of interviewers with respondents will result in minimising DK responses. But what about the DK responses that have already taken place? One way to tackle this issue is to estimate the allocation of DK answers from other data in the questionnaire. The other way is to keep DK responses as a separate category in tabulation where we can consider it as a separate reply category if DK responses happen to be legitimate, otherwise we should let the reader make his own decision. Yet another way is to assume that DK responses occur more or less randomly and as such we may distribute them among the other answers in the ratio in which the latter have occurred. Similar results will be achieved if all DK replies are excluded from tabulation and that too without inflating the actual number of other responses.

Use or percentages: Percentages are often used in data presentation for they simplify numbers, reducing all of them to a 0 to 100 range. Through the use of percentages, the data are reduced in the standard form with base equal to 100 which fact facilitates relative comparisons. While using percentages, the following rules should be kept in view by researchers:

Two or more percentages must not be averaged unless each is weighted by the group size from which it has been derived.

Use of too large percentages should be avoided, since a large percentage is difficult to understand and tends to confuse, defeating the very purpose for which percentages are used.

Percentages hide the base from which they have been computed. If this is not kept in view, the real differences may not be correctly read.

Percentage decreases can never exceed 100 per cent and as such for calculating the percentage of decrease, the higher figure should invariably be taken as the base.

Percentages should generally be worked out in the direction of the causal-factor in case of two-dimension tables and for this purpose we must select the more significant factor out of the two given factors as the causal factor.